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| Deferring Gratification |
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"… So many of us define ourselves by what we have, what we wear, what kind of house we live in and what kind of car we drive … If you think of yourself as the woman in the Cartier watch and the Hermes scarf, a house fire will destroy not only your possessions but yourself."
— Linda Henley
(Much of the economic woes we struggle with these days can be attributed to the impulse for instant gratification which American society, through its powerful influence-peddling media and with the help of the internet, engenders without apology. Need or want something? You can have it immediately, with little or no consequence. So the story line goes. By now, we know that’s a brazen lie.Experience has taught us that anything worthwhile takes perseverance, tough-minded discipline and the requisite time to see things through to fruition. Sadly, as many of us have found out while dealing with the heartbreak of foreclosures in a brutal recession, shortcuts often lead to short circuits.)
The practice of deferred gratification is a painful one. And who wants pain? It means letting go of the perceived whimsical, multiple yet tiny pleasures of the moment over a length of time in order to be in a financial position to afford the more significant purchases in one’s life. It involves avoiding spending money on trivialities in order to save and accumulate substantial sums for the really important things in life—like being able to afford to have more time to do the things one likes to do: study, travel, paint, dance, write and a host of other things that one would have liked to do if there was time enough or the money to buy time. In the mundane world, it means quite simply, to be able to afford to buy what he believes to be important to his life, whatever these may be.
Deferring gratification involves patience and sacrifice and having to make do without the things that one wants right at that moment. Our natural tendency is to get the things that we want right at this moment to satisfy a whim or placate that impatient part of ourselves—even if we have to go into debt to do it.
Most trailblazing, first generation immigrants who have had to start from scratch and have had to make do during the early part of their immigrant lives, do not have a problem with sacrifice. It is part of who they are and what has made them strong and resilient in the face of adversity. The supreme irony is that patience as a virtue is not something that is automatically, genetically passed down to young people. We all have a natural aversion for pain and sacrifice yet this feeling is strongest among the young ones in an affluent society.
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